I pay money excepting to get X. I get Y. You argue that Y is more valuable than X. I say that is your value system not mine, do not try to impose it on me, I paid for X, and you fraudulently substituted Y.

X is a tournament of players rated about my level.
Y is a chance to play a much stronger player.

If I sign up to play in an U1800 section and Carlsen butts in to dust me off in 18 moves, am I supposed to "enjoy" it for some reason?

You still get a thumbs down.
1 4 3

"it will be restricted to players under 1700 NZCF rating" copied from http://hamiltonchess.net/events/rookies-shield/

Does the father and daughter have the NZCF rating? NO!!!

Their ratings are FIDE rating!

What were their NZCF ratings? Unrated!

What's wrong the unrated players played in a tournment for the players under 1700 NZCF rating?

Tell me!!! Please

I don't go on the Playchess server very often, but I did play Steve in a couple of 5 minute games, and his id was either sgiddins or stevegiddins. Either way, he wasn't trying to hide his id.

dont forget the Hamilton Chess Club Rapid this weekend on Saturday the 13th
with free entry and international publicity for Woman Grandmasters !

http://doubleroo.blogspot.com/2011/03/rookies-cup-raider.html

Who cares? She is good looking and that is all that matters. We need more ladies in revealing clothing sit at chess boards.

This Story could have ended MUCH worse !
The unsuspecting chess club players /.. victims - are lucky to be alive : )

Why taint your name forever for a lousy € 40? Incomprehisible.

Maybe he's on the run from the law?! Strange story.

Why does this article exist?

Even if the reason for doing this makes no sense, isn't there some rule against using a false identity to play in a chess tournament? Are there no penalties? Bizzare!

Not sure why you take such fraud lightly - I took a rather harder line in my blog entry http://stevegiddins.blogspot.com/2011/03/tournament-raider.html.
However little money they made, it is fraud. Why do we want such people involved in chess at all? Off with their heads!

Wow, What a wonderful story!
To think, sometimes a local, small club try to invite higher rated players with no-entry-fee and the players would take the prize for sure. All club members are happy for their coming.
The father and daughter created an interesting story for us. Why should we blame them?
If they come to the club i go to, I would say: welcome again!

she is rated 2350 and is only 19. so my question is, why is the world did she stop playing rated FIDE events 4 years ago? If she played against people at her own level she might be 2500 by now. If she just wanted to beat up on weaker players she could simply play online. I don't get it.

Cheating is cheating. They took other players' winnings by an act of fraud.

The silly thing is her rating is within a couple of points of the top two active players in NZ [1] . She probably could have emailed just about any club and offered to turn up and do a simil or enter a tournament and they would have waved her entry fees and possible given her a little bit of appearance money (at least as much as she won in hamilton).

I'm in a small tournament this weekend [2] and the father has shown up and said he (at least) is interested in entering. They may get shy though.

[1] Of the two higher, Chandler is semi-retired and Wang plays in the US.

[2] http://www.aucklandchesscentre.co.nz/acc-weekender

O, I hussle like that all the time. I travel the world and play all the local tournaments I come across. In fact, I am much worse a fraud: I not only pretend to be lower rated than I am, I in fact play rubbish in these tounaments, just so they will not suspect me being a world class grand master: I go for the consolation prize. No one has ever noticed my genius. How about that for a cunning scam?

Ohh no 55 Euro!! What will the U1700 players in New Zealand do without all that cash!??!?! Their entry fee covered their "free" lesson. =]

There is also the rumour that a twelve-year-old in Clermont-Ferrand violated the touch-move rule. Will chessvibes send a reporter?

What a shame!!
Unforgivable! (provided it's a true story)

Rumor has it they inquired to play at the Auckland Chess Centre on Saturday and Sunday. See http://closetgrandmaster.blogspot.com/2011/03/foreigners-scam-nz-tournam...

Maybe they have money troubles or they are just very greedy. Or maybe they just love chess so much they have to participate in every tournament lol. But anyway 40 euros is a good prize to see some titties.

A correction - their combined prize was more than $55 - $55 was their combined profit after entry fees, etc.

I don't know, maybe this is all just a publicity stunt to promote chess. It's a scandel and a mystery involving a beautiful young female chess player! I must admit I did not know who she was before this, but now i do. Maybe she is making a point about the size of the prize money. Playing chess at the top level or even near it is more of a burden for most players. If some incentive were given to intermediate players, if they had a chance to win some sort of real money, chess would become very popular, very fast. Being invited to "big money" tournaments for players at her level and above is sometimes a political matter, and sometimes random.

This is not the first time I have heard stories like this from organizers of open tournaments. (Rated players trying to play in the unrated section or in a lower section than they should.)

It illustrates imo how there will always be people who will cheat whenever or however they can, even if there is little or nothing at stake. Which should make you wonder what happens when there is a lot (of money) at stake.

Live and learn. Ask proper identification.

But even then; what do you do when somebody has a (high) national rating but no FIDE rating? National ratings are not always so easy to find.

Also: organizers of big open tournaments with rating categories should always check the rating of EVERY participant; I highly doubt they all do that.

much ado about nothing......... When does Linares start?

These idiots also showed up at the Melbourne Chess Club, and tried to play our allegro under false ratings. (The Grand Prize is usually 40-50 dollars, not that they'd have won it anyway)

After somebody found an old rating for the guy around 1900, he practically started a fight and was pushed out kicking and screaming like a lunatic!

its a stretch to call the event she played in a tournament.
http://hamiltonchess.weebly.com/round-1-results.html

Her and her dad were the only real chess players there and the event was fun unrated speed event for patzers.

The http://hamiltonchess.weebly.com/round-1-results.html

How much appearance fee would you paid to get a stunning Women's Grandmaster to turn up to your event ?
Note Hamilton Chess Club paid nothing for this

The organizer Scott Humphreys (1663 Fide) has decided to internationally vilified this poor young girl for a bit of self promotion

The DAD behaved so badly in Melbourne Chessclub at one of the saturday allegro tournaments that I supposed he was from Rostock... They left after only two rounds...

@ Z

It seems to be that we were there at the same time... You are completely right.

The girl should indeed be Lara Stock, the similarity is too great. But I can 100% verify that the father is for sure Mr Stock, whom I have met on a number of occasions and who hasn't changed at all since the last time I saw him, in 2007. Having had the dubious pleasure of experiencing his conduct in a couple of World Youth Chess Championships in the past (in my capacity of Deputy Chief Arbiter and member of the organizing team), I have to mention that he is the definition of "troublemaker". Oh well.